The Ballad of Lucy Whipple Page 5

  After a stop at the general store, where I traded gold dust for some of last year's licorice, hard as rock candy and twice as dusty, I lay luxuriating in the afternoon sunshine, skirt hiked up to my knees, making up stories about magic and miracles and singing "Amazing Grace," "Turkey in the Straw," and "Woodman, Spare That Tree." Tree! Dag diggety! I had forgotten the danged wood! Mama, already hopping mad, would likely skin me.

  I bit my lip and tried to think. I didn't have time to make the three or four trips up the ravine necessary to fill the kindling box. Butte wasn't back yet. Prairie was watching Sierra. Well, then, I would take Sweetheart and some baskets. The work would go faster, and I'd be home in time to start the potatoes.

  I got Sweetheart from her shed, threw the rope halter around her neck, and tied a basket on each side. Sweetheart switched her ears one at a time, first the brown one, then the white one, and let herself be dragged up the ravine path.

  The path twisted and turned, reaching high enough so the air was cooler, the gnarled oaks dripped with mistletoe, and the meadows were blotched brown with mud and green with the promise of spring. I threw sticks and twigs and pinecones into the baskets, humming to myself as I pushed and pulled the mule along.

  In a small clearing wild strawberries bloomed. I dropped Sweetheart's halter and, sitting cross-legged on the new grass, wove the leaves and flowers into wreaths, one for myself and one that I looped over Sweetheart's white ear. Sweetheart laughed or complained—I couldn't tell which, since she always sounded like a parlor organ out of tune—and then ate her wreath.

  Through the brush I could see a small tower of interlaced branches and grass. I walked around it, looking carefully. A tower for a tiny Rapunzel, I decided, and spent a while imagining the prince climbing up Rapunzel's hair and the witch coming. But neither the prince nor the witch showed up, and I soon moved on.

  Coming down a rise, I saw there to the left, as plain as day, a tree branching in a Y—what we called back home a wishing tree, for if you sat in it and wished, you would surely get your heart's desire. With a big smile I clambered up into the crotch, closed my eyes, and wished: My heart's desire is to go home to Massachusetts.

  From my perch in the tree I looked around. The sun was low in the sky, and there were trees as far as I could see. Some were pink or white with blossoms, others were the soft green of new leaves, but most were the near-black evergreens that grew so densely up here. In the distance I could see a small clearing and a mule walking its stubborn slow mule's walk.... Sweetheart! Was it Sweetheart? Where had I left her? Where was she now? And where was I?

  I looked around again. There were the same pines as at Lucky Diggins, but no river. The same bramble bushes, but no creek. The same oaks, but no tents. I better go back, I thought. Trouble was, I didn't know where that was. The trees all looked alike, large leafy arms reaching for me and above all that huge bottomless bowl of a sky.

  I jumped down and ran around awhile, getting more and more confused. From time to time I'd hear a gunshot and shout, "I'm here, Mama, over here," sure that Mama was back and worried about me and had set out with a searching party, which was signaling. "Here, Mama, here," I called as the sun got lower and the gunshots fainter and fainter.

  Finally I flung myself down into the dust and cried. I am as good as dead, I thought. I'll starve or die of cold or be killed by a grizzly. All they will find are bones. And a bit of yellow hair, clinging to my skull.

  "What you crying about?" asked Prairie.

  Prairie! "What in Sam Hill are you doing here?" I asked, wiping my nose on my hand and my hand on my skirt.

  "Mama thent me. You're late for thupper," Prairie said. Her front tooth had finally fallen out.

  "How did you find me?"

  "Took the path up the ravine, turned left a thpell, and there you wath. Let'th go."

  "We can't go. We're lost."

  "Luthy," Prairie said, "you are the thilliest girl. We're barely two treeth and a hill from home."

  I explained about being lost and wandering and losing Sweetheart. We looked around for the mule awhile, calling her name and trying to make mule noises, but got no response. So I followed my little sister back to Lucky Diggins, head hanging but heart glad I wasn't lost or worse. Mama will be happy to see I'm not dead, I thought.

  "Here we are, Mama," said Prairie. "She wath jutht out back a wayth."

  Mama turned to me. She didn't look happy. "You forgot to start the potatoes."

  I said nothing about the mule while we ate our cabbage soup and salt pork stewed with turnips and Butte's wild greens and cowslip pickle and a batter pudding, but no potatoes.

  After supper, after the dishes were washed and the pots scoured with sand and the dirt floor swept with a corn-husk broom, the Gent pulled out his fiddle and the newest boarder, Rusty Hawkins, his mouth harp, and we had music. I had a talk with Mama and then sat down to write a letter by the light of a lard-oil lamp.

  Dear Gram and Grampop,

  Sometimes I wonder whether your daughter ever was a child herself. The Bible says we should strive for perfection, not be perfect all the time. I know it was my fault that Sweetheart is lost—a long story I will tell another time—and our extra income with her, but I think taking my money is beyond justice.

  After supper, I told Mama about losing the mule. I expected she would holler and maybe even cuss, she's so Californiaized, but instead she said calmly, "Sixteen dollars."

  "For what?" I enquired.

  "For the cost of the mule."

  "Where am I to get sixteen dollars?"

  "From that smelly old crock you're hoarding dust and money in."

  I told her that was my going-home-to-Massachusetts money, and she just sniffed and said, "Well, you'll likely never get there if you keep on doing bob-stupid things like losing our mule. Sixteen dollars."

  So my pickle crock is a blame sight lighter tonight and I have been sent in disgrace to my bed, and I am angry as a horned toad on a fry pan, as Jimmy would say. How did nice people like you ever get such a daughter?

  I put this letter under my straw mattress until I could decide whether to send it. I could hear the sounds of music and laughter, and although I was not about to give Mama the satisfaction of seeing me watching, I peered around the blanket curtain.

  They were dancing. The men who weren't dancing with Mama or Prairie danced with each other, arguing over who would lead and who was stepping on whose feet. I loved to dance, all by myself in the meadow outside the house in Massachusetts on a warm summer night, but clunking around the boarding tent in the arms of a miner in need of a bath was not my idea of dancing.

  Soon the Gent put down his fiddle and swung Mama around to the music of Rusty's mouth harp. She laughed and looked very young, like she forgot for a minute about lost income and lost mules. If I hadn't been so dag diggety angry, I might even have felt bad about adding to her troubles.

  Finally, when everybody was danced out, they rested their blisters a spell while Mama boiled molasses down for taffy. Greasing up their hands with lard, the boarders took turns pulling the candy into long strands and doubling it and pulling it again until it was a consistency to eat. By that time it seemed there was more of the gray, sticky candy on their hands and mouths and shirt fronts than in the pan. Some of the miners commenced playing dominoes while others drifted off to bed or to the saloon to drink too much and sleep in a drunken huddle on the saloon floor until morning.

  I heard the Gent say: "I sure do fancy that woman."

  Who? I thought, moving closer and picking up mugs and plates, the better to listen.

  "Who don't?" said Rusty.

  "Yeah. Well, I aim to marry her." Who? I thought again. Belle Scatter? Milly from the saloon?

  "You polecat, what makes you think she'd have you?"

  The Gent said, with a smile in his voice, "My charm, my good looks, and my money."

  Rusty slapped him hard on the back. "If that ain't the beatingest thing I ever heard. Why, you got the charm of a m
osquito, the good looks of a hog's butt, and less money than a greenhorn in a gambling house. I think she'd do better to take Jimmy."

  "Nevertheless," said the Gent, "I aim to marry Arvella."

  I dropped the stack of plates, and the rattling of tin rumbled like thunder through the tent. Mama? They were talking about Mama? The Gent wanted to marry Mama? As if Pa were just worms' meat and not Pa anymore, now he was dead!

  Mama was all I had left, and I sure didn't want to give her away to some man, even one with curly hair and a fiddle, like the Gent. My heart beat like rain on a canvas roof as I went looking for Mama.

  Mama wasn't in the front tent or in the big tent the boarders slept in. Thinking maybe she'd gone to the necessary out back, I took a candle and stepped into the night. A moving wisp of mist uncovered the face of the moon, and for a minute I was transported back to Massachusetts, where Pa was whispering, "California, get up. Come and look. Come," and there right outside the door, under a midwinter moon, a group of cottontails, freed by the clear weather from their underground burrows, were frolicking on the crusted snow.

  Then the mountain mist covered the moon again. Pa was gone, and I was back in Lucky Diggins, looking for Mama.

  Mama stood near the stump all alone.

  "What are you doing, Mama? There's no stars or anything to look at."

  I could see her smile in the light from the tent flap. "I'm just talking to your pa."

  I felt easier. The Gent would have a long row to hoe if he wanted Mama.

  CHAPTER NINE

  SPRING/SUMMER 1850

  In which Butte and I both get educated

  The warm days of spring brought an explosion of wildflowers—mustard, lupine, and golden poppies, wild lilac and wood anemone—that nearly concealed the holes, pits, and ditches the miners left behind. Spring also meant we could finally remove the heavy winter underwear that covered us neck to ankles in scratchy gray wool. I felt almost bare naked and so free.

  We finally moved into the wooden boarding house. Though it was little and crude by Buttonfields standards, the feel of a real house above my head and under my feet just about made up for the added chore of scrubbing the floor with clean river sand and the hog-bristle brush. There was room for twice as many beds, which meant twice as many biscuits, twice as many beans, and twice as many sheets to boil in great kettles outside, pound with battling sticks, and spread on bushes to dry.

  As if all this weren't enough, Mama decided that Butte was getting too rough and wild and uneducated and that I should teach him after supper each day and some on Sunday afternoon.

  "What do you mean, uneducated?" said Butte when I told him. "I already know forty-eight words for liquor."

  "You lie. You don't," I said.

  "Do."

  "Don't."

  Butte stood up and cleared his throat like someone about to make a speech. "Hooch, cactus juice, catgut, cougar's milk, gator sweat, jack-a-dandy, kingdom come, knock-me-down, mother's milk, throat tickler, firewater, alky, gullet wash, tangle legs, diddle, courage, bug juice, corpse reviver, popskull, stingo, blue ruin, panther piss, pig sweat, rotgut, sheep wash, snake juice, whoopie water, witches' piss, lightning flash, neck oil, ammunition, oil of joy, joy water, tiger milk, nose paint, sorrow drowner, bosom friend, snake medicine, bust head, cut throat, coffin varnish, craw rot, liquid fire, smile, blackstrap, corn juice, gut warmer, and chain lightning. Two more and I'll have fifty. Reckon that will be some sort of record."

  I was impressed in spite of myself.

  "And I know ten words for saloon: rumhole, mug-house, groggery..."

  "Butte."

  "And seven words for privy: outhouse, ajax, necessary, shi—"

  "Butte!" This was Mama. That settled it. Butte had to quit sweeping the saloon and get educated.

  Dear Miss Homer,

  I bring you greetings from Mama and all of us at Lucky Diggins. Thank you for the box of books. When it came, I just sat and stared at the miracle of a parcel with my name on it. I thought I'd make a plan for opening it over a long period of time, so I could savor it. Open the box one day, remove the contents another. Instead, I was so excited, I just ripped the box open and sat down on the floor with the packing paper piled around me and my chores undone.

  I took each book, smelled the paper and glue, felt its weight in my hand, and rubbed the raised letters on the cover and spine. I have lined them up on my shelf in the order in which I will read them. I am reading The Corsican Brothers now and think to start next either Evelina or The Book of British Ballads. I plan on saving The History of Little Goody Two-Shoes for last, thank you nonetheless for sending it. The packing paper I have saved for writing letters.

  The books got here at just the right time. I am to educate Butte, and I would get mighty tired of hearing him butcher Ivanhoe.

  Please send my greetings to the class, especially Essie Beck and Opal McCurdy. Tell them not to forget me before I figure a way to get back. I have been planning to write them but I fear that they never could understand my life here. How could I tell them about living with a bunch of men who never wash or change their clothes or speak below a bellow, in a space so small I can lie in bed and stir the beans on the stove without getting up? Those of us lucky enough to have a house instead of a tent paste calico and packing paper on the wall to keep the wind and dirt and bugs out. No one has a book or a new dress or flowers growing outside the door.

  Besides, postage costs so danged much.

  Summer came and was very hot and—impossible as it seemed after that wet winter—very dry. Where had all the water gone? No one washed body or sheets or shirts. Mama boiled potatoes in such a little bit of water that they scorched and Jimmy took to calling them "smoked potatoes."

  Prairie had planted beans and carrots and potatoes, hoping to store enough to see us through another wet winter if necessary, but the plants grew limp and sorry-looking in the heat. In August, when the river dried up, we looked to lose them all. So Butte and I took to walking downriver to the Forks, filling buckets in the Yuba, which still ran, warm and shallow but wet, and lugging them back to Lucky Diggins.

  I thought to use the walking time to continue Butte's education. "If we walk six miles each way, that is two times six, which is how many miles?"

  "Too many."

  "Be serious, Butte."

  "I'm mighty serious. This ain't no fun and you're making it worse with this two times two stuff. I'm tired enough and I'm certainly hot enough and I think I'm educated enough, too. Why do I have to know two times everything?"

  "Butte, even miners got to know how to subtract and multiply to figure out, oh, their expenses and whether Mr. Scatter or some banker is cheating them."

  "I don't aim to be a miner."

  "You don't? I thought you had gold fever and wanted to do nothing but search for color and strike it rich."

  "Not hardly. Too much dirt. I want to be the captain of a ship, a beautiful sailing ship that goes to the South Seas and the Sandwich Islands and maybe even around the world. I was never so happy as on that ship from Boston to San Francisco."

  The very memory set my stomach to churning, so I changed the subject back to arithmetic. For a while we practiced adding big numbers in our heads—4,786 plus 392—but we concentrated so hard on carrying numbers that we forgot we were carrying buckets and sloshed nearly half our hard-gotten water over our boots. We moved on to history.

  "Sea captains don't need to know history," said Butte.

  "Of course they do."

  "This one don't."

  "Butte, you don't even know what history is."

  "Do so. It's old stuff that nobody cares about anymore."

  "Did you ever stop to think that someday we will be history, part of the great Gold Search or some such? Maybe we'll be in history books—the mighty Whipples of Whippletown who struck it rich in California."

  "No more educating today, Lucy. Tell me more about the mighty Whipples."

  "Well," I said, relieved to be imagining i
nstead of educating, "there is Mrs. Whipple, the mother, who serves tea every afternoon in her big mansion and wears ruby velvet dresses and a big hat with a bird's nest on it. And the oldest daughter, Lucy, who is very beautiful and sought after by all the men but who prefers to lie in a hammock on her green and glorious Massachusetts estate and read. She does not eat oatmeal or possum or boiled milk and bread, and never has to chop onions or lug water in lard buckets. Next is Captain Butte, the famous mariner."

  "What's a mariner?"

  "A sailor. I told you you don't know everything. He sails the Pacific Ocean from San Francisco to the Sandwich Islands and has a beautiful Kanaka wife who waits with flowers and pineapples for his return. Next there would have been Ocean Whipple, but she died. Then Prairie..."

  "Say more about Ocean. Nobody talks about her, as though she never was. I remember Golden and the pneumonia, but all I know about Ocean is she was there and then not there."

  We stopped to rest our arms and take a few bites of the cold potatoes I carried in my apron pocket. "Papa used to talk to me about her, but Mama won't," I told Butte. "Never said her name to me as far as I can recall. Papa used to say she was no bigger than a minute, with yellow ringlets and a dimple in her chin. She called him Popsy.

  "Once Mama took her through the woods to Oakbridge. You and I were just getting over the quinsy and stayed with Gram, and Prairie and Sierra weren't born yet. On the way back from town, Mama sat down to get a stone out of her shoe and Ocean disappeared. They searched a mighty long time, but nobody ever saw her again. We don't know was it Indians or outlaws or wolves or what." I shivered. It seemed a whole lot more scary to me out here than it had back home, like something that could happen to anyone, not just a toddling baby.